1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a new computer-based messaging system, and in particular to a method and system for providing unified communication (UC) services over a local- or wide-area network. In one embodiment, those services are accessed from within an xe2x80x9cActivexe2x80x9d e-mail message which is sent to a subscriber of the services.
2. Description of the Background
A known method for sending a voice, fax, or video message from one user to another user over a local- or wide-area network is to attach the message to an e-mail as a passive data attachment. One such fax service believed to have been introduced in late 1998 or early 1999 is xe2x80x9cefaxxe2x80x9d from efax.com which receives facsimiles and converts them to e-mail attachments. By launching a tool separately provided by efax.com, the attachments can be viewed.
Currently many e-mail client programs can read and display HTML e-mail directly in a window of the e-mail client program. Although some client programs do not support direct in-line viewing, most other e-mail client programs support opening the HTML e-mail as an attachment which can subsequently be viewed in an Internet Browser (e.g., Microsoft Explorer or Netscape Communicator).
A relatively new object oriented computer language called Java was developed by Sun Microsystems and has become an Internet-standard for developing small applications, called applets, that run in a common environment, such as a World Wide Web browser. These applets have the ability to utilize graphical user interface objects and communication objects that are provided through standard object classes. Java programming examples are described in Java in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference for Java Programmers by David Flannagan, and Java AWT Reference by John Zukowski, both of which are published by O""Reilly and Associates, Inc. and incorporated herein by reference. Java is also described in the Sun Microsystems Series of books published by Prentice Hall Books entitled Core Java, Instant Java, Java by Example, and Just Java by Cornell, Pew, Jackson and Van Der Linden, respectively, which are all incorporated herein by reference. Documents are also available which describe web techniques and programming. The contents of the Third Edition of xe2x80x9cHTML Sourcebookxe2x80x9d by Ian S. Graham, published by Wiley Publishing, and the Second Edition of xe2x80x9cJavaScriptxe2x80x9d by David Flanagan, published by O""Reilly and Associates, Inc. are incorporated herein by reference. An additional Request for Comments that describes document formats that is incorporated herein by reference is: RFC 2068 entitled xe2x80x9cHypertext Transfer Protocolxe2x80x94HTTP/1.1xe2x80x9d. Similarly, xe2x80x9cWireless Application Protocol (WAP)xe2x80x94Wireless Markup Language (WML) Specificationxe2x80x94Version 1.1xe2x80x9d by the Wireless Application Protocol Forum, Ltd. and xe2x80x9cA Technical Introduction to XMLxe2x80x9d by Norm Walsh. ArborText, Inc., 1998, are also incorporated herein by reference.
Documents are also available which describe electronic mail handling procedures. In particular, two Internet standards on e-mail are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety. They are: Internet STD014 entitled xe2x80x9cMAIL ROUTING AND THE DOMAIN SYSTEMxe2x80x9d (also known as RFC 974) and Internet STD0010 entitled xe2x80x9cSIMPLE MAIL TRANSFER PROTOCOLxe2x80x9d (also known as RFC 821). The contents of the Second Edition of xe2x80x9csendmailxe2x80x9d by Bryan Costales and Eric Allman, published by O""Reilly Publishing, is also incorporated herein by reference. Additional Requests for Comments that describe mail formats that are incorporated herein by reference are: RFC 2045 Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies, November 1996; RFC 2046 Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types, November 1996; RFC 2047 MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) Part Three: Message Header Extensions for Non-ASCII Text, November 1996, RFC 2048 Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Four: Registration Procedures; November 1996; and RFC 2049 Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Five: Conformance Criteria and Examples; November 1996.
The present invention sends an e-mail message including an active user interface to communicate with the unified communication services. This allows the recipient to not only listen and/or view the message, but also to respond to it through the interface. Using the features of the interface allows a subscriber to call or fax individuals and perform other functions directly from the interface within the e-mail. This method is quicker, easier, and more user friendly than known methods since it reduces the number of steps the individual needs to go through in order to respond to the message and/or perform related tasks. By interacting with the interface rather than the message itself, the actual message can remain stored on the server and is only retrieved when the subscriber desires to view/listen to its contents. The retrieval of voice, fax, and video data stored on the server can be done using streaming technology such that the user can listen and/or view the message while it is being downloaded.
An advantage of using an interface that is xe2x80x9climitedxe2x80x9d to a message is that the e-mailed message remains xe2x80x9clightweightxe2x80x9d so that the interface portion of the message itself is only 2-10 kb in size, rather than potentially being much larger, especially for images, voice streams or data streams. That is, the notification message with the user interface is a substantially constant size for voicemails. The message is substantially independent of the size of the voicemail that it is linked to because only a link to the message is used. Similarly, the interface for faxes is substantially independent of the number of faxed pages received.
Within the interface itself, the present invention allows the individual to select whether the system should include a link to the message or the message itself, when sending e-mail to a subscriber. This allows greater flexibility for smaller messages that would benefit from including the smaller message with the interface.
Enriched E-mail as described herein is an e-mail message that has at least one of an HTML, WML, XML (or similar language) document attached thereto and which provides at least one user interface within the e-mail. Such an interface provides access to and/or control of a variety of online and offline services.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a unified communication service such that the service allows at least two services (e.g., voicemail, facsimile, and e-mail) to be combined into a single, distributable user interface.
It is a further object of the present invention to integrate services which allow a user to be tracked via the telephone using the same user interface that controls voicemail, facsimile, and e-mail.
These and other objects of the present invention are accomplished by providing a computer system that acts in conjunction with (1) a voice messaging system and (2) a digital communications network. The voice messaging system receives messages and provides access to those messages in digital form across the digital communications network. The digital communications network can be either a local area network or a wide-area network (e.g., the Internet). The messages can be delivered in either encrypted or non-encrypted format.